History, doctrine, culture, books

Victorian Doubt

"Books contain a deadly and secret poison. Many a young man has been destroyed by reading a single volume." No, that's not a quote from a recent General Conference; it was written in 1829, warning young Englishmen about the dangers of reading scholarly analyses of Christian history and doctrine. The quote is the first paragraph in a short CT essay entitled The Power of Books, highlighting the struggles of 19th-century Victorians with higher criticism and with evolution. The Victorian debate sounds surprisingly similar to the ongoing dialogue between apologists and religious liberals within the LDS Church. Will Mormonism, too, split into fundamentalist/conservative and liberal camps? If it did, which would you follow?

Hilarious introduction. The truth is that such a quotation wouldn't be out of place there.

To answer your question- It may seem strange to say, now that I'm on the broad road of apostasy, but I think the church would do well to stick with its conservative/fundamentalist roots. One of the biggest draws of Mormonism originally was that it's not "just another church." It made some pretty radical claims for itself, which I find unbelievable now, but would be pretty cool if true. Prophets who can authoritatively say "Thus saith the Lord," spiritual gifts, a dispensation of the fullness of times, creating a Zion society, and all that. The church today has little if anything to say about those goals, but I say if you're going to start out as a charismatic, literalist religion- at least be consistent about it!

Mormon Books 2013-14

Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of MormonismGivens and Grow's warts-and-all biography of this energetic missionary, author, and apostle whose LDS career spanned Joseph Smith's life, the emigration to Utah, and Brigham Young's early leadership of the Church in Utah. My Review